Years later, I now believe that such a pattern is true for almost any field. There are some who are actually naturally good at certain things, and then there are those who appear to be naturally talented. For the casual observer, this difference will all but go unnoticed. Yet, given a choice between talent and hard work, somehow I prefer hard work. It’s perhaps because I have seen a lot of people waste their talent, as they became carried away with what they could do, while, those who reached such a stature by hard work understood the process and what it takes to succeed at the highest level.

In the book “Outliers” by Malcom Gladwell, he mentions something similar – the 10,000 hour rule: claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. Now, if you practised what you want 2 hours every day, that’s going to take you just about 14 years to become an expert at it. This is why it’s so important that you don’t let anyone tell you how bad you are at something. The only thing that matters is how much you love doing it, and how badly you want to make it up there. Talent can be substituted for hard work in lots of cases – especially if the process of ageing is not a factor for what you are trying to achieve.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” – Arthur C Clarke once said. I’m not asking for magic, we need more mavericks – those who confront our apathy, and inspire imagination. We need more start ups – not yet another software consultancy firm – but start-ups which build actual products that change the way people work. They need not be altruistic in nature (of course that would be splendid) – just show me a different perspective. Show me what could be done better.

Many people would say that research is what will drive innovation. But, I can tell you that that’s not true. Research and lack of funding for it has become an all too easy excuse for those who are happy to live in the world they have been given. I am not trashing the importance of research – but many great ideas that have been driving the technology outside India are technology we already possess. It’s not a failure in research – it’s just a failure in applying what we already know imaginatively.

I really have no idea when the launch will be, but it’s something quite different as a social game, so looking forward to having a go at it!

In a batch of some twenty students taking the exam, there would be around 20-22 question papers, lying face down and spread out on a table near the entrance of the lab. We queue up by our register number and wait patiently for our turn. Each person, when his turn arrives walks forward, looks at the pile of question sets, and chooses ONE.

The cruel thing about this process is that, in case the question happens to be the only question you had not studied for (one law states that the probability of getting a question is indirectly proportional to the amount of confidence you have with the answer for that question), you would end up feeling really mad at yourself for picking that paper!

This has led to numerous superstitions amongst the students, when it comes to picking a paper. A friend of mine once said he will always pick the right most paper. Another person said he would pick the one in the middle. Some try to keep a blank mind and pray that their fingers randomly touch a paper with an easy question. And, the last person in the batch almost always curses his fate for being the last guy in the queue, because he is left with only a few papers to choose from. Or, on an unlucky day, only one paper to pick up.

But, I ask myself, does it really matter which paper I choose? Deep down I know it doesn’t. My logical reasoning tells me that there cannot be any correlation between picking a paper from a particular position and the difficulty of the question. Yet, some things are just outside the control of your logical mind. You would rather be superstitious than “break” the habit and end up with a killer question. Especially when you are already depending on the stars to wade through an exam!

Forgetting all that for a moment, what is still surprising is to see so many sites (including some well-known ones), having an outdated date on their site footers. You can see this especially around the turn of the new year. I have seen this in a few WP templates as well.

Ok, just a gentle reminder. Don’t embed the copyright year using plain html text. Use your server side scripting language (read as PHP or Ruby these days) to generate them.

In PHP, you can do it as simply as:

echo "Copyright " . date('Y');


Simple, but effective. Now, that’s one way to keep your old, unmaintained websites up-to-date!

So, that comes to now US$40, INCLUSIVE of shipping.

If you are interested, get one right now.

In my case, it was both a someone (Barack Obama) and something (Cameron Moll’s beautiful letterpress posters) which inspired me to create these.

These 14” by 20” posters are a product of hours of (fun) labour, letterpressed using one of the very few platen letterpress machines still left in Chennai. I was intent on printing this on letterpress and after days of literally hunting down press after press in some of the most dingiest streets of Chennai, I am glad I finally found one and got it printed.

I would be making a more detailed post on the backstory and the process behind the making of this poster soon. If you fancy it, do grab a copy!

Update:

I have also posted this item on eBay, if that’s your kind of thing (and I know it’s kinda difficult sometimes purchasing things randomly on the web). The price is 5 dollars more, due to the extra charges that eBay imposes.

Added a photo of the (zinc) metal block which is used in the letterpress printing process.

More often than not, we are bogged down by our fear of what others might think. We are afraid of failure, rejection and criticism. We dare to dream, and yet decide not to take the plunge. We write ourselves off, without even giving ourselves a decent chance. After all, inaction can be comforting. But not for long. If you quit just because you were afraid of taking the plunge, then you will not be in peace with yourself. You will carry the burden of an unfulfilled dream.

So, just take the plunge. Do it because you believe in yourself. Do it because you are convinced you can succeed. Taking the plunge means growing a thick shell towards the naysayers. It means raging against the dying of the light. It means being patient and persevering. Above all, it means giving yourself a chance to prove yourself.

Do not judge yourself on the conclusions of others. Do not use someone else’s life as a yardstick to measure yours. Everyone is unique and thus accelerate at different rates and at different times. Evaluate your progress only against your own goals. Even if all goes wrong, you can’t cease to hope. And you definitely can’t stop working.

Dreams translate to hope, which in turn manifests as belief that eventually drives achievement.

One thing that irks me though is these little content teasers that appear on the landing page:

There are typically four to five teasers which rotate periodically (notice the little clock on the top right hand corner). I find it quite irritating that these teasers sometimes change just as I am about to click on one of the links, as a result of which, some other page would open up.

The problem here is not the timer as obviously, to rotate the content you would need it. Perhaps it could have a slightly longer timeout. But I think the real issue is that the timer should be frozen, atleast for a short period, when the user hovers over the link. Simply because, it might indicate that the user’s focus is on the content teaser (yes, not always true, but it’s a reasonable assumption) and he might click on the link any moment.

Another side effect of this quirk is that the the slider actually slides to the next teaser when the user has right clicked on the link to try and open it in a new window (never mind the fact that the “Open in new window” does not work in the first place).

Now, I am not trying to be cynical here by bringing up a small issue, in context of the overall great design and usability of the site. This is just a reminder to myself and everyone in the UI field that the money is in the smallest of details, and how even the smallest of unexpected behavior can irk users significantly.

For me, because I have been on holidays, and been completely free.

For my brother, because he has had school every single day, including Sundays.